Making the Rounds – February

This Friday, the sun was starting to come out, winter is starting to feel somewhat behind us and this coming weekend is the first since mid-December that there wasn’t snow covering most of the ground around Boise. Though the temperature struggled to get to the 40s this afternoon, it just felt a bit like spring was giving us a tease of what was coming a few weeks from now.

My first stop was Bier:Thirty and was pleasantly surprised to find the remnants of an Occidental takeover a couple days before. The Hefewiezen was very good, with classic Bavarian banana yeast notes, the Pilsner was rather sharp and pungent and just had that skunky slant that probably is correct but just puts me off a bit. The Alt was the third and it reminded me a nice clean dry Amber, since “alt” is a style that I just can’t understand very well. These were the first beers from Occidental that I have had. Out of Portland, OR they are something that I will be keeping an eye out for, for sure. Their tag line is “Best. East or West” I kind of think a better one would be “Occidental, Purpose Driven Beer”….give it a minute. (They can use that if they want)

Down the road was PreFunk. The location that started it all, a couple years ago. It must have been “Bring Your Dog” day judging from the number of crotch-sniffers and leg lifters that were nosing around the place. Not that I mind, as long as my beer doesn’t smell like a wet dog, I’m fine. The place still had a few Founders‘ beers from last week’s mega hit “Welcome to Boise” night. I had the entire Founders line-up then so I tried a half pint each of a couple others I didn’t recognize. The PilsGnar from Barley Brown’s was a bit lighter and milder than the Occidental Pilsner I had an hour before, was a bit easier to drink and not so harsh. Very nice. The Lush IPA from Fremont was good and even though I have seen it around town, on tap and in cans and bottles he last couple months, I had not tried it until now. This one is fairly dry and bitter. Citra and Mosaic hops lend a tropical fruity hop flavor, but the dryness and biter bite make it bold enough for the IPA haters to keep their distance. They can go find a “Fat Tire” and cry in it

Right next door, about 50 yards south is Woodland Empire, the first true brewery on today’s gauntlet run. They had their Cozy Up milk stout on, both the 2016 and the 2017 versions, but I opted for the Woodland Pale, falsely assuming that it was one of their regulars that in my old age I had merely not remembered. I was shocked to find, after a moment or two of online research that something so generically named was in fact new and untasted by me. I quickly jumped on to RateBeer and Untappd and checked in on both respectively to rectify this inequity.